Wayfaring Stranger
by PompeyMagnus
Summary: Shinji Ikari stares numbly at the brink of Death...and coughs. An old man's guilt, and the end of it all. Songfic, please read and review.


Well, yet another songfic by me…I do like writing songfics…They're often fun, amusing, weird, and they involve songs I enjoy…

Plus I don't need to ever update them. 

This is to the tune of Johnny Cash's "Wayfaring Strangers".

Anyway, let's start the show!

Disclaimer: I don't own Evangelion or its characters. Gainax does, and they rock. Who else could create both Evangelion and FLCL!

* * *

The man leaned forward, his face wrinkled, his eyes weary. 

He was tired…he'd always been tired…since…

He'd tried to survive after, tried to live on, despite the feeling of loneliness.

After all, they'd been alongside him for a long time, and they were still alongside him.

They helped him through the day, they helped him in the ways they knew how to.

He stared at the portrait of the young boy, standing alone in front of a now irrelevant city, with a blank look on his face.

He'd always done what they wanted him to do, he'd always done what they'd told him to do.

_Shinji Ikari lay on the cold beach sand as crimson waves lapped up and down close by. He craned his head, and the giant head of Rei seemed to stare back at him, blaming him for everything._

_The Third Child smiled as he stared up at the sky, an odd grin dancing across his face. _

_There was white hand in his right hand and squeezed it for strength, speaking aloud._

"_I'll never see them again…"_

_The world seemed silent except for his voice._

"_It's better to think of it this way…"_

_He squeezed her hand again, smiling grimly._

"_I'm still alive, so I'll keep on living…"_

_He cocked his head over to his left side, and in the distance he could see the glimmering specter of the First Child hovering over the water, exactly as she had been when he had first met her._

"_There's nothing left for me…is there, Ayanami? I failed…"_

_Rei simply floated over the water for a few more seconds and blinked out of existence._

_Shinji sighed and turned his head to the right side where he held a disembodied white hand._

"_I'll live, I'll continue on…"_

He let out a sigh, his face twisting into an odd expression.

His hair was almost as white and pale as his face, his hand trembling as he unclenched and clenched it, unsteadily, a gruesome scar on the side of his skull.

"We did fail…after all…Rei…"

He reached out to touch her pale face as she stood there, the decades not having changed her at all.

She stared at him and smiled hauntingly; sending a chill up his spine and making him retract his hand by reflex from the beautiful expression, filling him with guilt seconds afterwards.

She suddenly shimmered off into the distance and he coughed, although it may have been a noise of sorrow in his younger years.

* * *

**I'm a poor wayfaring stranger  
While traveling through this world of woe  
Yet there's no sickness, toil, or danger  
In that bright world to which I go**

**

* * *

**

He barely restrained himself from stumbling forward as his father crept towards him, staring at him with a listless face.

"My son..."

Shinji Ikari charged forward, swiping his hand towards the man, his hand passing through Gendo Ikari harmlessly, the former of Commander of NERV disappearing.

Shinji's attack was more of a feeble lurch, and he landed on his knees, coughing and holding his chest.

"No…I can…I can never forgive you for allowing her…to board it…We can talk…later…"

He waved his hand blindly and dismissively.

"Later…later…"

He coughed weakly from the exertion, stumbling forward as he remembered.

_He stood upon the distant beach, the pale hand still beside him, and shut his eyes tight tears running down his face._

_It was then he felt the presence looming before him, and he shuddered at the familiarity of the shadowy figure, the specter in front of him_

_He stared at Gendo Ikari, standing there in his uniform, staring listlessly._

_Shinji balled his hands into fists and stared out into the open ruins that seemed to stretch out for miles._

_He felt horrendously lonely, but satisfied by the finality of it all._

"_Are there…others like me?"_

_Gendo stared at him and then spoke, his voice gruff._

"_No…"_

"_I hate you…"_

"_That…is because you still hate yourself. You can never be reborn."_

_

* * *

_

**I'm going there to see my Father  
I'm going there no more to roam  
I'm only going over Jordan  
I'm only going over home**

**I know dark clouds will hang 'round me,  
I know my way is rough and steep  
Yet beauteous fields lie just before me  
Where God's redeemed their virgils keep**

**

* * *

**

Touji nodded as Shinji chuckled weakly, although to the former Third Child, their laughs sounded youthful and boisterous.

"Hah, you still with the demon?"

Shinji sighed, looking away from his friend.

Touji was as real as…well, he was real, Shinji knew it.

Simply because reality was irrelevant when you were the last man on earth. How could one define their perspective as incorrect without others to compare themselves to?

Touji Suzahara was real, the souls of the world still resided in its orbit, just as real as the red-haired girl slowly approaching him.

His heart beat, and then stopped, skipping a beat. He could actually feel it, it made him feel odd and inhuman, although he'd grown used to the feeling.

What did being human mean anymore anyway? Being Shinji Ikari?

But still she strolled closer to him, the young girl of his dreams, in his dreams for the last decades of meager existence. Each decade had passed like minutes; he wasn't sure if he'd really lived at all.

She continued, closer, and he could see her face now. And with her face, he could see the memories.

_Shinji Ikari stalked towards the young girl, although his position was far from predatory, in fact it was as close to begging as he could standing._

_He moved closer to her turned back and then finally spoke, his voice a desperate but collected whisper._

"_Asuka…I want to help you, and I want to be with you forever. "_

_Asuka turned, staring at him with a grimace and then a growl, shaking her head slowly._

"_You want to help me? Then don't do anything. Don't come to my side anymore. You will only hurt me!"_

_Shinji's body shook, but he continued to stride forward, determined._

"_Asuka, help me! Only you can do it!" _

"_That's a lie. For you, anybody will do. You are afraid of Misato and Rei, too. You are afraid of your father and mother, too. You are only escaping from me. You can't feel this as being truly happy!"_

_Shinji could not stop, simply striding even closer, reaching his hand out abstractly for her in a gesture of hope and desperation._

"_Please help me! I love you Asuka!" _

_She scoffed, her face twisted in rage and denial._

"_You love me! You never think about anyone other than yourself! Get away from me, I hate you!"_

_He struggled with words, tears running down his face, but she interrupted any rebuttal with venom words._

"_You only think of your own existence! You only think of yourself! You're really completely pathetic!"_

_Her hands shoved into him roughly, sending him flying backwards, crashing into a chair and knocking a cup of hot coffee down from the table onto his shoulder, making the pain even worse. _

_Shinji winced, clutching his shoulder, blood dripping from his mouth as he rose, still full of hopeless determination, actually causing Asuka to stop and stare at him with concern, if only for a few seconds._

"_Asuka... Who... who can save me? Please help me... please help me... Me... please help me! Hold me…Don't ignore me! Don't ignore me! Don't kill me!"_

_She stood there, silent, her face no longer twisted in rage, disgust or even spite. She simply stood there, her chest expanding and detracting with every slow breath. And this silence, this meager, possible indecision gave Shinji Ikari fuel and hope, hope that his sanity could be healed._

_All this was of course shattered with one word, one syllable._

"_No."_

_It was calm and almost a whisper, which made it sting even more. Shinji knew that some of Asuka's words when she was raging were just meaningless tirades were just shows of dominance and rage. But now…her answer had been so soft, so sublimely horrendous._

_He reached out, his hands wrapping around the slender deck of the girl he adored and admired._

Shinji Ikari coughed, and she shimmered away from him, like she had always done when they were young.

_Had that been a part of Third Impact? Or had it been real? _

He couldn't remember anymore, and it didn't really matter.

* * *

**I'm going there to see my Father  
I'm going there no more to roam  
I'm only going over Jordan  
I'm only going over home  
**

**

* * *

**

Suddenly, Shinji Ikari closed his tired eyes, remembering everything. Absolutely everything.

_Shinji Ikari stood in satisfaction at his creation, a makeshift masterpiece indeed._

_He had planted four crosses in the sand, on small mounds, and each had a different name crudely scrawled into it. He read them off somberly as his eyes drifted around his work._

"_Rei Ayanami…Gendo Ikari…Yui Ikari…Misato Katsuragi."_

_He lay the white cross he had found on the last mound, and then peered at two other crosses. _

_They lay in the dirt on top of each other, not in any mound, in front of two deep holes Shinji had spent what seemed like and most probably was, hours digging._

"_Shinji Ikari and Asuka Sohryu…"_

_He sighed as he turned around, preparing to grasp the limp, cold disembodied arm and almost lovingly place it in the grave._

"_I'm sorry it had to end this way…Asuka…I love you…"_

His words had been true, but in the end, meaningless.

His only reply was a silence that seemed ever present for the next few decades, slowly driving him into a contented madness.

But in truth, he had planned the final grave, but in the end, his cowardice had won out and revealed the truth to him.

_Shinji began to walk up the stairs, his head hung low, his hands twitching at his sides as he struggled within at the absurdity of it all while the two stoic black-suited escorts guided him forward._

_Suddenly his eyes widened and he pushed past the two agents with a grunt, running forward just as they managed to stop him, struggling and shouting to Kensuke, Hikari, and Touji._

_It's me who should be hit! I'm mean, cowardly, dishonest, and weak!_

He was all the things he shouted from that train station, and more…To induce such an outcome upon the halls of mankind, and then refuse complementation was madness.

But the entire situation had been madness, he realized that now. In truth, all he wanted was peace and quiet. He remembered it all now, and decades of guilt piled themselves upon his shoulders.

"_I really don't know anything about myself…But piloting the Evangelion…I don't have that quality anymore…I can't do anything to help other people! I have done something horrible to Asuka…And I killed Kaworu. I do not have a kind, gentle side. I'm only a weak-hearted, wicked boy. I can only hurt other people! So, I'm not going to do anything!"_

The only difference now is he could not run away or even hope to support or hide the feelings anymore, he was too weak, too lonely, too old.

_Rei turned to Shinji, her crimson eyes glistening._

"_This is the sea of LCL... The primordial soup of life. A world without AT Fields... _

_Without your own shape. An ambiguous world where it is impossible to tell where you end and other people start. A fragile world where you exist everywhere, and thus exist nowhere. You must recover you lost self on your own. When you'll be back on Earth, if you succeed to imagine yourself, everybody will be able to recover"_

"_Back on Earth!"_

"_Yes, you must go back on Earth…"_

"_Why!"_

_Asuka appeared beside Shinji's bed, startling him with her voice, a voice he had grown to love and at times abhor._

"_If you don't try to imagine any evolution yourself, nothing will ever change. It is the hearts of people that create their appearance. "_

_Misato Katsuragi appeared at the foot of the bed, still as she had been before the SEELE invasion, her soft voice piercing into Shinji's very essence._

"_And new images will change peoples' hearts and appearances. The power of humans is the power of imagination."_

_A new commanding voice rose over the others, Shinji craned his head to see a tall man with a cold stare and glistening glasses._

"_Father…"_

"_Shinji, all living things have the ability to return to their original form."_

"_No!"_

_The entire world seemed to shake with his reply._

_Shinji Ikari clutched his head, screaming and shaking it like a petulant child._

"_No! I've had enough! I am the one for which nothing shall change! Nobody wants me, nobody cares, so everybody can just die!"_

"_One who hates others cannot love himself…"_

_Rei appeared in front of him, speaking calmly._

"_No one understands me!"_

"_You don't understand other people."_

"_I thought this was something painless. A perfect world." _

"_Because you don't try to understand the world, you think this is unfair."_

"_Betrayed…You've betrayed my feelings!"_

"_You've misunderstood it from the very beginning. You are creating feelings for yourself." _

"_Nobody wants me. So everybody, just go, and die!" _

"_But, everyone has the right to live."_

"_It will be the same with, or without, my existence. Nothing has changed. So, everybody, just go, and die!" _

"_But your heart has been dampened by your tears." _

_Shinji let out a scream, swatting at Rei's shimmering figure and sobbing._

"_No! Stop telling me these things! I want peace! I want quiet! I want calm of the heart and soul! I only hurt others, so I cannot be around them!"_

_Suddenly beside him was a woman with soft brown hair that resembled Rei. Shinji knew very well who she was. She had a mournful look on her face, and remained silent, her face showing her apparently on the verge of crying._

"_Pax…"_

_Then there was a flash of light, Shinji let out a shriek, clutching his head._

He had wished for peace and silence, and that was what he had received.

He was truly alone, and in the peace, he found new chaos, driving him mad for human company.

Eventually, that, like all things in life, passed as well.

* * *

**  
I'm going there to see my mother  
She said she'd meet me when I come  
I'm only going over Jordan  
I'm only going over home**

**

* * *

**

The old man closed his eyes, shivering slightly, his chest heaving up and down weakly as if he were crying.

His arm limply dropped down to his side and he dropped the portrait as his heart ceased its incessant actions.

He felt as if years of movement and energy wasted in a meager existence had finally caught up to his body, the speedy years finally culminating in a laborious and inglorious end.

Who would know Shinji Ikari?

What legacy did man have left over but a miserable old man?

He knew what he had to do, in truth, the destiny that he should have chosen in the beginning.

He should've known no one loved him. In the end.

The portrait dropped to the floor and settled, depicted inside its well-worn frames was a young boy, who seemed to have a genuine smile on his face. His hair was a shock of dark brown, his eyes cerulean deep.

He slowly stumbled forward and then dropped limply into the welcoming crimson ocean, a mournful look on his face as his body and soul surrendered.

* * *

**Well I'm only going over home  
Yeah only going over home  
I'm only going over home**

**

* * *

**

Odd fanfic, I know, I know….Not my best…Hope you didn't think it was lame or anything…

It was okay.

Anyway, later…Hope ya'll enjoyed this…I reckon…eheh.


End file.
